Daddy

July 6, 2020
Cline follows up her bestselling The Girls with a probing, low-key collection that speaks to the raw nerves of everyday people as they struggle against pressures both personal and perennial. Families torn apart by secrecy and regret feature in “What Can You Do with a General,” in which a family’s Christmas Eve is darkened by the prospect of euthanizing their dog, and “Northeast Regional,” where a father facing his missteps in life is summoned to the boarding school where his son was expelled after a violent incident. A woman caring for a child of celebrities becomes thrust into a scandal in “The Nanny,” and retreats to a family friend’s house in the canyons north of Los Angeles. Two adolescent girls undertake a disastrous attempt to get the attention of a near-stranger in “Marion.” Cline’s ability to peer into the darker corners of her characters’ lives and discern desolation is also on display in “A/S/L,” which follows a young girl in and out of rehab, while a son living in his film producer father’s shadow debuts his terrible movie in “Son of Friedman.” The subtlety of these 10 stories may surprise readers expecting the same luridness Cline brought to The Girls, but the payoffs are as gratifying as they are shattering. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

July 1, 2020
Cline follows The Girls (2016) with a nuanced story collection portraying a variety of characters navigating uneasy transitions in their lives. In What Can You Do With a General, John and Linda await the return of their young adult children prior to Christmas; while John reflects on the stagnancy of his existence as well as his self-prescribed altruism, gritty familial perspectives are revealed. The Nanny follows the titular Kayla amidst the fallout from the revelation that she had an affair with her charge's celebrity father; as Kayla hides from the media frenzy with her mother's college roommate, she is forced to confront her complicated realities. Cline explores her characters' tricky connections, new and old, to those around them. In Los Angeles, as transplant Alice struggles to find her footing, her relationship with a young co-worker leads her to an unexpected side job. In the punchy A/S/L, Thora's turn in rehab becomes heightened after the arrival of a well-known guest. Cline's 10 stories constitute a riveting, timely tapestry of realizations, motivations, and desires.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2020
Tales of coastal malaise from the author of The Girls (2016). Several of the stories in this collection are about the failures and disappointments of older men. In "What Can You Do With a General," a father tries to understand his adult children when they come home for Christmas. In "Son of Friedman," a washed-up writer who has left California for New York endures the premier of his son's terrible film and makes an awkward attempt to interest a more successful friend in a new screenplay. Cline's voice is understated; her pace is slow and steady. The reader arrives at the central conflict of the story obliquely--or, in some cases, not at all. The details of the misdeeds at the heart of "Menlo Park" and "Northeast Regional" are never revealed. There's a sameness to these stories, and a few read as if the moments in time they depict were chosen at random. The selections that have young female protagonists are more engaging. The main character in "Los Angeles" endures the atmosphere of sexual harassment that's just part of the job for women in service industries; her attempt to reclaim some agency has its own risks. Twenty-four-year-old Kayla is hiding out from the paparazzi in "The Nanny." She has no remorse for her sexual dalliance with the famous-actor father of the child in her care. Her feelings about the affair are primarily shaped by how the scandal is playing out on social media. "She came across a new photo--she looked only okay. A certain pair of jeans she loved was not, she saw, as flattering as she'd imagined it to be. She saved the photo to her phone so she could zoom in on it later." The old men in the other stories gathered here would no doubt find this reaction cynical and self-absorbed--an example of the superficiality inherent in growing up online. Kayla's peers, however, might note that these old men grew up shaped by the privilege of thinking that the world owed them something. Well-crafted depictions of people at crisis points in their lives. Some crises depicted are more compelling than others.

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